What’s gross about the pink goop beef, made by Beef Products Inc (BPI), is that it’s actually made of of “beef trimmings” which are the undesirable, leftover crap of a cow that’s better fit for dogs than humans. Taking it one step further, the beef trimmings are then processed and soaked in ammonium hydroxide and churned into ground beef. Agh, it’s disgusting to even think about. This pink goop beef actually makes up 70 per cent of America’s ground beef too!

It’s taken a while but McDonald’s has finally decided to step up its standards in the US. As Angus over at Lifehacker Australia reported yesterday, the patties used by McDonald’s in Australia only contain real beef. It might taste fine, but pink goop meat is so bad that US Department of Agriculture microbiologist Geral Zirnstein doesn’t even consider “the stuff to be ground beef” and considers “allowing it in ground beef to be a form of fraudulent labelling”. Oof. And we enjoy this madness!

Joining McDonald’s in the pink crap ban is Burger King and Taco Bell, which means we can breathe a sigh of relief as we won’t be eating ammonium hydroxide soaked beef and beef trimmings fit for dogs when we want to eat crappy fast food.

Ammonium Hydroxide, known to most of us as household ammonia, is often used in the meat industry to prevent bacterial contamination. I don't know if it is used much in Australia, but if you have a burger with ground beef in the US, it's going to have been treated with Ammonia regardless of what cut it was originally.

I have a mate who used to work in an abattoir who can confirm that McDonalds in Australia does get the very best cuts of Australian beef. They used to have a day for it and apparently the Inspectors were pretty intense.

Although, he also mentioned that Woolworths Inspectors were even more stringent.